Dedovskiy and Others v. Russia (Application no. 7178/03)

A selection of key paragraph(s) can be found below the document.

85. As noted above, the use of rubber truncheons against the applicants was retaliatory in nature. It was not, and could not be, conducive to facilitating execution of the tasks the officers were set to achieve. The gratuitous violence, to which the officers deliberately resorted, was intended to arouse in the applicants feelings of fear and humiliation and to break their physical or moral resistance. The purpose of that treatment was to debase the applicants and drive them into submission. In addition, the truncheon blows must have caused them intense mental and physical suffering, even though they did not apparently result in any long-term damage to health. In these circumstances, the Court finds that the applicants were subjected to treatment which can be described as torture.